Notorious B.I.G’s lyrics arranged in haiku form
Bashful Basho
On lifestyle and finances:
escargot, my car go
one sixty, swiftly
wreck it buy a new one
On childhood:
super nintendo, sega genesis
when I was dead broke
man I couldn’t picture this
Literary Doppelgangers
Joe Brainard may have handed James Franco a free pass to the “New York School,” where during the 50s and 60s, poets, painters, dancers, and musicians (unemployment check in one pocket, manifesto in the other) all “hung out” and made stuff out of cardboard or something. Of our most “generational” literary places: Paris gave you nihilism, Bloomsbury gave you spell-check, New York gave you solipsism, and San Francisco — thanks Haight St. — gave you lice. It’s a good life to be a good looker, and charm doesn’t hurt. Brainard died of AIDS, Franco died of Spiderman, and we all die after the break.
Theories on Religion & Writing Proficiency
From OkCupid blog
OkCupid, a stupid dating website that has yielded no results (my summary being “disappointed narcissist seeks unconditional love and ride to parents’ house”), has a blog that at least is not stupid. They matched up profile religious affiliation with writing proficiency. Without being politically correct and sparing any feelings, here are my theories about the results:
Phallic Phractals
Why would the word “choad” be used to describe two distinct parts of the male anatomy which reside in extreme vicinity? Choad means both 1) a penis that is as wide as it is long, and 2) the area between the scrotum and anus (fml. perineum) — as conceptualized using fractals in opposite directions (emmision and butthole serve to orientate the viewer). It’s like using one word to describe both the rind and pulp of a lemon. Words are free, just make one up. Call a penis that is as wide as it is long a “brupmont” and the conflict ends.
I once heard a male porn performer refer to his imminent emission as “choad,” that (emphatically) “Oh, [he’s] gonna blow [his] choad on [her],” which is either semantic negligence on his part, or exclusive insider lingo. Brupmont will probably never catch on, as those who host such a diminished digit speak meekly into their laps.
Meeting people is cheesy
David Hockney’s 1988 portrait of his critic/curator friend Henry Geldzahler is a likely summoning of Van Gogh’s 1889 portrait of his postman Joseph Roulin. Hockney is a known admirer of Van Gogh, so this is not shocking news; it just struck me how similar the subjects look — God’s template for people limited, each person another’s reincarnation. The men, weighed down by middle-aged bulk, look out over rosy cheeks with sky blue eyes. Their collars made from sharp triangles, the guillotine of fabric life.
A cynic will say it’s all about who you know, which might explain Hockney and Van Gogh’s respective ascent and descent in the art world. (Roulin unfortunately could only help with the mail, by which Gauguin’s heated correspondence was no doubt conveyed.) Van Gogh only had a set of brushmarks, and Roulin’s beard is described in the same fashion as the manic trees and clouds of Van Gogh’s dreamlife. Hockney’s less modernist brush work is cleaner, flatter.
“Yah, it’s all about who you know,” I hear myself say at parties to the spinach dip, “fucking system.” Cynicism is rationalism for losers, so hello. If there is a system, Gauguin left it when he moved to Tahiti forever, braising in the humid yellowed air with beautiful brown women. “I shut my eyes in order to see,” he once said, under a spell of sweaty Tahitian sun hinted by Henry’s tropical-themed shirt, which means vacation is either near or just ended.
The eye’s translucence is paradoxically noted with an opaque dab of white. Nothing so fake as painting can be so real. The great thing about art is every stranger, however long ago, has a chance to see and be seen. It’s all about who you don’t know.
On Freedom
I have qualms about contributing to the current hype around Franzen’s Freedom, the endless pop-noise which ironically is confronted in the book’s lakeside allegory; but I feel compelled to, having been so moved by the book, and apologize for attaching my name to this review.
Soon after a quick intro written in omniscient third person, the reader encounters a longish part (broken into 3 chapters, labeled as such) written by one of its characters Patty — and yet, this doesn’t feel like “meta-fiction,” or even the show off flourishes of an adroit author; it seems, while not essential, strangely relevant. The reader’s context, for those who know Franzen, is that he is weary of “difficult” fiction for its preoccupation with language and fragmented narrative/consciousness (he wrote a Harper’s article critical of William Gaddis’ infuriating/challenging techniques, yet strangely aligns himself with D.F. Wallace, also an instigator). So one asks, why the difficult-ish structure?
26 Comments
September 17th, 2010 / 2:34 pm
September 17th, 2010 / 2:34 pm
Literary Doppelgangers
WOODY ALLEN & JOYCE CAROL OATES
There’s a Woody Allen joke where he and a woman mutually undress in a hotel room, until he, without his glasses on, realizes he’s standing before a mirror. That woman, if there ever were one, would be Joyce Carol Oates, also near-sighted and pensive, self-conscious with dour eyebrows. Of the life-size bronze statue of him in Oviedo, Spain (a town he featured in Vicky Cristina Barcelona), let us hope he doesn’t undress before it. He also said “Don’t knock masturbation, it’s sex with someone I love,” which Joyce read as a rejection that fateful night in that hotel room, leaving her with nothing but time, and that chest-sinking task of writing too many novels to count.
Fruit Journalism
My suspicions that free live sexcam chats (in this case LiveJasmin) were pre-filmed footage of “performers” acting sexy while ostensibly reacting to instant messages w/o actually reading or engaging in clientele discourse were confirmed when I, as guest41, asked PusyKhat what color was the inside of a mango; she had two chances to answer “orange,” or [any reasonable color, e.g., yellow, tan, etc]. guest142 and guest54, no doubt less inquisitive than I, offered PusyKhat the usual “hi” and “sexxy,” as if such a lovely lady had not been met with those sentiments thousands of times before. I struggled with the thong but finally decided it was safe for work, as our technologies have yet to convey the olfactory world.
Uncategorized / 27 Comments
September 8th, 2010 / 5:29 pm
September 8th, 2010 / 5:29 pm